Viability Processing Across Partner-Selection Regimes

This theoretical preprint develops the comparative regime branch of the Admissibility-First Partner Selection programme. It builds directly on the foundational architecture established in Paper I, while remaining analytically distinct from the parallel operationalisation and measurement branch developed in Paper II. The designation “Paper III” is therefore bibliographic rather than chronological. The paper examines how viability processing is organised across different partner-selection regimes before preferences become decisive. It compares internally inferred romantic or self-selection systems with externally mediated arranged or negotiated systems, treating both as ideal types within a broader continuous and hybrid regime space. The analysis focuses on six dimensions: the location of viability processing, the visibility of threshold criteria, the form and density of mediation, the information architecture through which slow traits become legible, the allocation of mismatch risk, and the timing of preference activation. The paper argues that selection regimes differ not primarily in whether viability thresholds exist, but in where threshold work is performed, how visible it becomes, who carries the burden of verification, and how uncertainty and mismatch risk are distributed. Externally mediated regimes may make viability processing more explicit without necessarily making it more restrictive, while internally inferred regimes may appear preference-driven despite substantial upstream candidate filtering. The paper also interprets hyper-individualisation as a privatisation of viability processing and mismatch risk rather than merely an expansion of personal choice. The contribution is structural, comparative, and non-normative. It does not rank selection regimes, defend coercive arrangements, prescribe partner-selection practices, or treat concentrated outcomes as morally self-justifying. Its purpose is to clarify how a common admissibility-first architecture changes when viability work is differently located, mediated, made visible, and translated into candidate-set contraction. This work is part of the Dyadic Systems, Relationships, and Family Formation programme within the wider Structural Viability and Drift research programme.